What we give out to the world is what is returned to us. We’re in the flow, we’re not going too fast, we’re in the flow of traffic, in our lane in our zone. McConaughey believes that “we all have the feeling when we’re on frequency, when our relationships are going well - with our career, our selves, our God. As he says, “Sometimes it was just good fortune, a greenlight landed in my lap and it has no rhyme or reason but I was going to do something with it.” 2 Find your frequency. But even then, you have to take advantage of those moments. However, he also acknowledges that sometimes things just go your way. I made decisions today, and sometimes even sacrifices, that teed me up for more pleasure or more of what I wanted tomorrow.” As McConaughey says, “I created a lot of the greenlights by taking responsibility today, which created freedom for me tomorrow.

Sometimes you have to take charge and guide your own way. Any hardship, any pause we took, any intervention, interruption… they have greenlight assets that will be revealed to us later.” McConaughey adds, “Red and yellow lights eventually turn green in the rearview mirror.”įor a deeper dive into the discussion, here are seven main takeaways McConaughey shared about the lessons that success and failure taught him when it comes to living a more meaningful and purposeful life. They have a lesson in them that we were supposed to learn. Maybe it was false drama that if we would have slowed down and stopped we would have been dwelling on it and turned that molehill into a mountain.”Įventually, he says, “I found all the red and yellow lights in life revealed themselves to have at least a greenlight asset in the future. But oftentimes, you see that yellow light and the choice is to put the pedal to the metal and don’t give that little crisis credit. He goes on to say, “The verb of the greenlight metaphor is really in the yellow light, meaning you have the choice to slow down and stop and let it become a red light, which sometimes we need to do in life when we need to have some introspection. It’s things in our life that affirm our way, they say ‘go, proceed, more, please carry on.’ While yellow and red lights make us slow down in life - they can be crisis, hardship, intervention, interruption.” He believes that “a greenlight is being kind to our future self. Looking back through old journals, McConaughey found eight common categories, and in deconstructing them, he came up with the idea of greenlights.

McConaughey starts the conversation by diving deep into the title of his book and what the metaphor of greenlights means. < Back to Blog 7 Key Takeaways from Matthew McConaughey’s Book, GreenlightsĪctor, producer, and author Matthew McConaughey takes us on an inspirational journey as he explores themes and insights from his new book, Greenlights, in the MX Visionaries Forum.

Greenlights book review